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It was a remark from a young desi-American that set me thinking. An architect, he is part of a team designing a movie museum in Hollywood for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences — the organisation responsible for the Oscars. But his dream project is closer to home: he is itching to design a movie museum for Indian cinema in Mumbai. “Can you imagine how fantastic that could be,” he says.

I couldn’t agree more: Indian cinema occupies our collective consciousness. Courtesy the ‘films’ of the Lumiere Brothers screened at Watson Hotel in Mumbai in 1896 and Dadasaheb Phalke’s fascination with the ‘new’ medium, Indian cinema is as old as cinema itself. The real question is, why don’t we have such a temple to the seventh art?

In 2003, the central government announced plans for a Museum of Moving Images in the Films Division Complex in Mumbai. Its purpose was “to encapsulate the socio-culture history of India as revealed through the evolution of cinema, to develop as a research centre focusing on the effect of cinema on the mind and society and to serve as a living museum.”
Perhaps it is not the job of the government to do this, but of the Indian film industry biradari. They could easily raise the money for a museum — as revenue from advertising from televised screen awards and other functions. For instance, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, largely comprised of individuals from the world of cinema, organises fund-raising events for the real estate for the eight acre campus of their movie museum project.

In fact, had the Academy Awards been cancelled this year (it was a possibility if the scriptwriters’ strike had not ended before the ceremony) plans for the museum would have been delayed. The revenue from ABC alone for rights to televise the Oscars is said to be over $70 million, not counting revenue from Internet and other broadcast rights.
Bollywood is as much of a dream factory as Hollywood. But there is no one place in either Mumbai or Hollywood where aficionados can hear the heartbeat of film-making, where film pilgrims can immerse themselves in the process of mythmaking. In its explanatory note about the museum project, the Academy uses Gertrude Stein’s famous quote about Oakland: “There is no there there” — to describe Hollywood. “The purpose of a museum dedicated to the filmmaking arts and sciences would be to put a ‘there’ in Hollywood,” according to them.

It is even more so the case for Bollywood. A couple of the major old studios in Hollywood have preserved the sets of a few of the seminal films. Here, everything has gone with the dust and indifference. Just think of what one could put in our very own mecca of movies. Take the Sheesh Mahal set in Mughal-e-Azam where the twirl of Madhubala in Pyar kiya tho darna kya was reflected in a thousand little mirrors. It was apparently thrown away a few years ago.

Or the set for Raj Kapoor’s dream sequence in Awara: the spiral stairway leading heavenwards and the huge head of a deity (emulated recently by Sanjay Leela Bansali in Saawariya) are gone. The crucial staircase in Jaagte Raho was rented out for years, but even that had to go; there was no place to store it.

Time for resurrecting Indian cinematic history is running out. Whatever is left needs immediate resuscitation. Tucked away in darkness at the end of a long corridor in RK Films is a room stuffed with memorabilia from Raj Kapoor’s movies: Dimple’s polka dot bikini from Bobby, Raj Kapoor’s tramp and clown costumes, the huge black umbrella that partially protected Nargis and Raj Kapoor in Pyar hua, ikrar hua...

If the movie magnates are unwilling, the tourism department of the Maharashtra government could take up the mantle. In Manhattan savvy entrepreneurs have even organised Sex and the City tours, taking tourists to places where the television series was filmed.

Email: jain_madhu@hotmail.com